Just Cause 2 Multiplayer

The Game Room
1

The Just Cause 2 Multiplayer Mod project is rather ambitious. Just Cause 2 has no native support for multiplayer whatsoever - so it all has to be done through a workaround. A script in the game reports your position and what you’re doing to a master server, and then retrieves data for people around you, and orders the game to generate players/vehicles/etc in the appropriate place. It’s kinda rough because it’s basically a complete hack from the ground up, but they’re improving it significantly over time.

This is the sort of thing I’ve been waiting for for a long time - thousands of people in the same giant world, except not sterile and boring like an MMO. Whenever I play JC2 I always thought how fun it’d be with a lot of other people, and here it is.

Right now the mod is in limited open beta stage - they run their beta servers every other weekend or so and you can only connect when they’re up. But during those times there are over 1000+ people running around in the same Just Cause world. There’s no rhyme or reason, no objectives or anything - you just run around doing goofy stuff.

It’s hard to find one video that best shows what it is, so I’ll post a few. Some NSFW language, probably.

Massively multiplayer
Vehicle goofing compilationPanau International Airport
Bloopers and glitches
More stunts

There are lots of longer videos with more gameplay - just search for “just cause 2 multiplayer” on youtube.

Some of those videos are a few months old - the netcode has improved since then so there’s less warping and glitching and such, but it’s still a work in progress. It’s amazing what they’ve been able to do by basically very creatively hacking a game that has zero support whatsoever for what they’re trying to do.

PC version only of course. Free download at the site linked at the top of the post. You have to catch them at a time the master server is up - rumor is that it may be this weekend but nothing official yet. At some point they’ll release the server code so people can run their own servers, but no one knows when that will be.

You can teleport to arbitrary X/Y coordinates in game, so when we all play together we can meet up, hijack a giant cargo plane, grapple 20 rickshaws to the back of it, and then fly into the most populated area we can find. Or try to jump speedboats into helicopters. Or a thousand other things. Who’s in?

2

It’s up! They’re not announcing it on the webpage for some reason, but if you install the client and launch it, you’re in.

3

Have they made any additional improvements since a month or so ago?

I played it then and it was both fun and… I dunno. Things like impromptu demolition derbies were fun. Things like people camping the spawn locations and blasting grenades at you before you had finished spawning were less entertaining.

4

I’m not sure, since this is my first time playing it. They mentioned overhauling the netcode and adding features like properly representing the stunt jump position on vehicles to other clients. The spawn killing thing hasn’t been a problem for me yet because I’ve spawned in vastly different places each time.

5

Joined SenorBeef and Co tonight. There’s not really much point to it than to run around and grief other players while avoiding being griefed yourself. Just some stupid random fun.

6

You make it sound like a bad thing. It’s not griefing since you’re not doing anything purposely to ruin anyone’s fun - it’s just chaotic with everyone doing spontaneous stunts or killing everyone or doing kamikaze runs.

7

Yeah, griefing probably isn’t right term. The point of the single player game is to run around and blow shit up. The multiplayer action is to run around and blow each other up. Or blow yourself up. Still great fun.

8

I’m surprised there isn’t more interest in this. We have a lot of JC2 fans and the multiplayer is quite unlike anything else ever made.

Eventually when they feel like it’s in releasable form, they’ll give out the server program so that anyone can run their own world - so we could do our own little private stunts and such. I do hope there’s at least one massive server that holds 1500+ people though like the betas have been.

9

JC2 is $3.75 on steam until 10am pacific tomorrow. Everyone grab it, go go go.

10

JC2MP is having an open beta weekend, so if you’re interested, make sure you have JC2 installed and download the client.

11

Beta is open, so if you haven’t downloaded the client yet you can now (which is what I 'm doing as I write this).

You can sign into their beta/forums via Steam, so it is completely painless.

12

They’re doing another beta this weekend, I haven’t been keeping up when they’ve been running them so I haven’t played in months but I’ll see how they’re coming along. You’d think it’d be in release by now.